Netflix is part of the Apparatus

This post is probably going to sound a little more crankish than you get from me, but now that I have a flesh and blood son who’s rapidly growing up, I find myself thinking about certain things a lot more often and critically. Specifically, how will he be educated? What shows and movies will he watch? And what values will be passively hammered into his impressionable young mind?

I’m not a big conspiracy theorist, but I think it’s clear enough, if you stay abreast of the news and have baseline observation skills, that Education and Entertainment have been the domains of the Left for some time now. It may not have happened in any kind of concerted way beyond people hiring those with views similar to their own, but here we are.

I think the pendulum will eventually swing back the other way, though how and when is anyone’s guess. There’s a glimmer of hope to be found in the Indie Spring that new technology has allowed in recent years.

Amazon and YouTube are not safe havens for creators. YouTube has been quietly demonetizing unfavored affiliates for a while. But still, there’s a lot more content out there now that the TV broadcasters and movie studios aren’t the only ones with access to large audiences.

This is a very good thing, in light of the direction companies like Netflix have been taking their business.

Earlier this year, though, Netflix hired Susan Rice to its board of directors. Rice, of course, is a controversy-embroiled former member of the Obama administration. You may remember her as the one who told Face the Nation that the Benghazi attack was the result of a spontaneous protest sparked by a YouTube video.

Sounds like someone I’d want helping to steer the ship of my online streaming video business, and not at all like some kind of politically motivated hiring.

Let’s not forget that a decent chunk (not all) of the original content that Netflix has been putting out over the years has been postmodernist, “progressive” (that is, dismissive or hostile to traditional values), and/or openly Leftist.

Yes, Netflix scrambles to pick up talent like Amy Schumer and the Obamas. And yet when Last Man Standing, ABC’s second most watched comedy was inexplicably (or politically) canceled, and viewers were wondering if another network would pick it up, Netflix…did nothing. Fox recently announced that it had snapped up the series, but it makes you wonder. If Netflix were really interested in diversity of programming, you’d think it would have jumped at the chance to pick up a more conservative-leaning, popular TV show. So why didn’t it?

Netflix does have neutral content and a smattering of conservative-friendly stuff, but the real answer is that the company has got one foot in the liberal, California tech world and another in the liberal, California entertainment world. And now it’s bringing on Democrat politicians, as well. Diversity, to these people, does not include differing ideas or philosophies. It means non-white, non-Christian, non-heterosexual, non-male.

The company may see itself as a plucky upstart challenging Entertainment’s Big Players and striving to provide something for everyone, but the reality is that Netflix has become a Big Player. It’s become part of the Apparatus.

Conservatives don’t tend to boycott as much as liberals do, and I think most average folk probably don’t recognize what’s going on. I mean, as much as I could get by fine with just Amazon Prime, I’ve got a wife who wants to watch A Series of Unfortunate Events and Lost in Space: the Gritty Reboot. So Netflix will keep doing its thing and people will (for now) keep watching.

But one day the pendulum is going to swing. And it won’t be just for Netflix.

In the meantime, we have to be vigilant. As a parent, you can’t completely insulate your children, and you can’t control everything they’re exposed to. Nor, arguably, should you. But at least during their formative years, you’ve got to be responsible for their education and make sure if they’re exposed to modern dreck that they’re also provided context and truth.

And when it is under your control (a little TV before nap time!), you’ve got to know what your kids are watching and make sure it’s something wholesome. For which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?

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10 thoughts on “Netflix is part of the Apparatus”

Good post. My husband and I dropped Netflix a few months back because we weren’t using it as often as the $8/mo justified, they were losing content we liked, and we felt guilty not using it. There are lots of alternative shows for kids out there that aren’t necessarily indie, but still teach good values in entertaining, balanced ways.

I like to shop the the thrift stores for my fav DVDs so I can afford entertainment on my terms.

Mr. Rogers, Reading Rainbow, and Sesame Street (pre-Elmoification). If it was good enough for us, it will be good enough for them. (I joke, mostly, but I understand that Reading Rainbow is back as a web-only deal).

I just brought a big box of kids books back from my mom’s. In my day TV was called books.

Ideally, yeah. But I remember watching kids shows earlier than I remember being able to read! And also I’m not sure how soon books will be able to keep a young child’s attention. But still, you make a good point. And yeah, I forgot about Mr. Rogers and Reading Rainbow!

Apparently drawing was the only thing that stopped my mom from having to peel me off of the walls on a regular basis before I could read, although I largely dropped it after I got hooked on books. We had antenna TV and that was it so not a lot of kids’ shows options.

Start working on your philosophy of parenting right now.
the more you have a philosophy, the more you can have a plan, and the less you end up reacting to individual events in isolation.

A friend had some good insight:
In every interaction with your child, either you are teaching/training him,or he is teaching/training you.

That doesn’t mean every interaction has to be a power play, but that means you need to always have patience, always have clear reasons for what you are doing, and always be ready to explain those reasons to your child, in terms they can understand.

My parental philosophy was:
Trying to get them from complete dependence to complete independence with as little permanent emotional/physical/mental damage as possible.

And then I also made sure, starting when they were age 11 or so, to talk *with* them, to understand what was important to them, to be able to talk about their interests, even if I didn’t share them.

Going to second the Veggie Tales suggestion.
And homeschooling. That one though, is something I’m always hesitant to recommend just because of the sacrifices it entails and telling other people to sacrifice is really hard for me to do.